Student newsletter encouraging political understanding switches to Instagram platform


The Olive’s most recent Instagram post addressed the controversial topic of cancel culture. (Photo courtesy of Neil McWhorter)

Amid political polarization reinforced by algorithms and disinformation running rampant, The Olive Newsletter at USC has created an Instagram platform to combat these forces by showcasing a variety of perspectives.

“Recently, we’ve switched from a newsletter format to a social media format because we feel like it’s a bit easier to read, but second of all, we just think that it can probably get more exposure, especially given the boom of both advocacy and politics that seems to have sprouted up on social media,” said Rafael Xu, an Olive team member and a senior majoring in political economy and philosophy, politics and law.

The Olive is a project that stems from Novus Think Tank, a USC student think tank that focuses on social change projects. Since 2018, The Olive was formatted as an email newsletter that described politically pressing issues, provided information and links to the sources used, and sent useful articles for people to read. 

Today, they still focus on pressing and polarized topics, demonstrate different perspectives and provide reliable sources, but the format has transitioned entirely over to Instagram. 

Their recent post addressed the idea of cancel culture. The first slide defines the issue itself and  the post goes on to explain its current relevance, the pros and cons, the reasoning for both viewpoints and the sources and resources used — all presented with purple colored simple graphics.

In Fall 2018, several individuals within Novus Think Tank, including Xu, decided to create The Olive Newsletter because political polarization was becoming a very prevalent issue at the time, particularly after the 2016 presidential election.

“We realized that polarization seems to be something that was not only increasing, but also really damaging towards both civil discussion amongst people and political conversation amongst people, as well as the actual political process itself, so we were trying to come up with ways that we could, in a way, address political polarization,” Xu said. 

The goal behind demonstrating different opinions is to create productive conversations that include listening to and attempting to understand the mindset and assumptions that come from a particular opinion.

Freshman Amy Pang, one of the students who works on The Olive, thinks the organization’s power comes from its objectivity in a media world she believes can lack this quality. 

“We really want to make our content objective and able to tell different sides of each story without bias. And so people can use our content and our posts as a tool to better navigate media in a really polarized time,” said Pang, who is majoring in economics and international relations.

One of their upcoming projects includes hosting media literacy campaigns and workshops. They are currently conducting outreach to secure a guest speaker and start a campaign focusing on depolarizing mainstream news.

Neil McWhorter, a junior majoring in economics who helps with The Olive’s social media, was inspired to work on the team because he found political polarity to be a serious problem within the environment at USC as well. 

“There’s a lack of listening, and I found that problem was very strong at USC. I also found political apathy was strong at USC and so I’ve always thought that information and providing a platform is the best way to [address this],” McWhorter said. 

The name for The Olive came from this mindset of promoting positive listening. The founders named it The Olive to encourage people to “extend an olive branch” to those with different viewpoints rather than cause polarization. 

Moving forward, The Olive team hopes to continue pushing the USC community to be more aware and engaged with political issues in a healthy and productive way.

“We will be having different kinds of events or different kinds of projects that are going to continue to engage this student populace politically and get them to think about that difficult question of ‘OK so that’s somebody’s opinion, what informs that opinion? What makes them think the way they do?’” Xu said.